...for me it was Iron Maiden. In high school I used to listen to the usual pop-punk and sugarcoated nonsense that most 16 year olds listened to at the time. But one of my friends was into heavier stuff and brought me Fear of the Dark to listen to. From then on I was hooked, threw out all my crappy albums and stocked up on metal. My tastes have just got heavier and heavier (but Maiden are still my faves). I'm now 21 and metal is my life.

Korn's debut was the first 'metal' album I heard. On casette, too. I still have a soft spot for it, and though I now realise that it's not all that spectacular, musically speaking, I still love it for it's unbridled, raw and pure emotion. You don't find many albums where you can actually HEAR the band FEELING what they're playing (and in this case, in particular, singing). I mean, the dude cries at the end for like ten minutes! If you ask me, that's heavier than any of your blastbeat double bass drum peddle stuff. Although, I don't mind a bit of that either hahah :)

I got into cock rock in like 6th grade and slowly moved on to heavier stuff. When I was a freshman, we got a channel on the TV called The Box, that played mostly rap. Every now and then they played metal, so I got into it kinda like that. I got different tapes from classmates. When I was a sophomore, the freaks came to school, and I gravitated to them. One day, I went to a music store, found Utopia Banished from Napalm Death 'cause it was the most brutal thing I could find, and picked it up. I just went on from there. I started buying metal mags to educate myself and on and on from there.

Bon Jovi lead me to metal :-) No shit. I went down the road of hair/glam metal (Poison, Slaughter, Kix, Motley Crue), discovered Metallica and then it was on to heavier stuff. Pantera was next. Anthrax, Sepultura, Deicide and it opened up from there.

I've always seemed to go in two directions at once as far as my musical taste is concerned. At the same time as I discovered Hedpe, I was getting into Sepultura. To this day I listen to both those bands a LOT.

The very first 'Metal' Music I remember hearing was Static-X and Ozzy; my older siblings had em on tape, but only one song of each. The tapes they had mostly carried Deep-House Music with DJ's and stuff. I listened to all sorts of stuff cuz Music wasn't a big part of my life at the time. I was tiny.

Once I got older,the bands that began to grab my attention on the radio were Metallica, Pantera, Megadeth, Ozzy, Iron Maiden, ect. Classic Rock was also good to me.

In my Frosh or Sophomore year of High School, I asked this kid to "Metal my ipod for me". He hit me up, but he hit me harder than I expected. Going through my ipod, I was given my first taste of the underground, and I loved it. It was mostly Death Metal stuff, along with some Thrash. This was how I discovered Amon Amarth, Bolt Thrower, King Diamond, Venom, Kreator, Napalm Death, Morbid Angel, Arch Enemy, ect.

A little more than a year ago (I believe), I was on youtube and I saw this True Norwegian Black Metal Documentary, and I watched the entire thing. I've never seen anything like it. People leave comments and someone asked a question that had me searching the interweb for and answer, and I stumbled upon a Metal News site (you guessed it) metalunderground :) I've gone deeper into the underground ever since. I didn't know about sub-genres either, but now I got a basic idea. In addition, I've become more open-minded as a person as well.

I can't exactly pinpoint where my road to metal started, as it was some years ago. I think the first metal band I listened to was Metallica (as cliched as it sounds), and it was with that song "One." Either it was that or Enter Sandman, but I can't remember. I was into a lot of classic rock, and still am, but that started me off with metal.

my brother loved grunge and metal when i was in late elementary school/middle school. so i sorta grew up with it. eventually he grew out of the 'metal' phase and starting picking up indie/rap. so he gave me all his music after i showed an interest in it. he also introduced me to metallica and black sabbath, which were my first real metal loves. around the same time he showed me tool, pantera, and a bunch of others i didn't like that much at first. From there i started listening to a college metal station (WSOU Seton Hall's Pirate Radio), which got me into lots of other bands over time: slayer, opeth, etc. in addition to this i religiously watched VH1's rock show (where i first heard blind guardian) and much music's LOUD (deftones, static-X, entombed, and a shit load of others). also around the same time those two shows came in my life, i started downloading MP3s (so about 1998 right now), though i could only fit two on my computer with a 1.3GB hard drive, better than nothing i guess. my first two mp3s were November Rain by GNR and Du Hast by Rammstein (i eventually built my own computer).

From there everything just exploded. with napster's chat room feature i met and connected with a bunch of local bands i still keep in touch with, and rediscovered blind guardian (supposedly i missed who they were on VH1) and got recommended tons of European acts to check out. but probably the biggest thing to influence me was this this guy who had this FTP server and shared the most music i've ever seen anyone to have (1999/2000 or 2001 not sure at this point). i got into In Flames from him (downloaded pinball map music video), Sepultura, and countless others. Keep in mind this downloading frenzy was on a 56k modem lol. i'd love to meet this guy one day. his name is JT. and he sometimes goes on Direct Connect if anyone uses that. at one point his Hard Drive died, and he lost like 1/3 of his music. keep in mind 100% of his collection was bought. i think he said he had 3-5 CD binders (bout 350 CDs each) full of music. anyone here got such a massive collection they could share?

oh yeah i also used audio galaxy satallite. oddly enough i didn't like napster that much, other than the ability to get recommendations from users. the lack of ability to resume sucked...

My entry to metal is about as ironic as it comes. A big fan of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (still am to this day) I sat down as a kid (maybe around 2001) to watch a movie awards show. Some band called "Mettalica" or something played a song called "I Disappear" and then had an advert about how downloading music with Napster was stealing.

A while later, my older sister had some cool songs on our computer, apparently downloaded with this Napster thing. I thought I'd give it a go, and struggling to think of a song I wanted to listen to I thought of this "Metallica" band. What proceeded was a veritable torrent of Metallica downloading, ironically leading them to be my favourite band whom I own all the albums.

From there my friends and I traded cds of Tool and Pantera, but a Friday late night (like 4am!) TV show introduced me to Slayer, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Pungent Stench, Moonspell, GWAR and a host of other sick stuff. I would tape it each Friday and then get home from Saturday rugby and watch it - those were the days.

Oh, I see how it is. You people want an actual story of getting into metal. Well, when I was like, ten?, my cousin who is four? years older than me... sat me down and forced some headphones on me. He then made me listen to half an hour's worth of some guy screaming and cussing about how he hated his life, hated the world because it thought he was queer, and how his daddy touched him when he was little. At ten years of age, I didn't even know what touching was. That shit blew my mind. Being a scrawny little weasel, I decided I liked the power of the music, and immediately went and got myself a copy of the album, though even back then I thought the idea of purposely misspelling your band's name was kinda dumb. The backwards 'R' thing, however, was (I loved the ninja turtles in those days) most excellent.

Black Sabbath, right out of the gate. My older brother bought Paranoid (on 8 track) the day it came out and I heard the intro to Iron Man from my bedroom. I burst through his bedroom door, got my ass kicked but listened to the album with him for the next three days straight. Been hooked ever since.

Ok every1 get ready for a super shocker..... Metallica-Master Of Puppets got me into metal. I know I know, all the metalli-hate i have now makes me sound hypicritical, but its true. Went to a friends house to play war, I was just over 10 at the time, and his brother had M.O.P. blaring and the song Battery made me stop and listen outside his window. Needless to say I got pegged with a bb gun to the back of the head! But Metallica got me into metal.

I was 15 years old. At that point, the heaviest music I liked was Korn and Linkin Park. The first *actual* Metal band I got into was Arch Enemy. I first heard "We Will Rise" and I never heard solos like that before then. So I got "Wages of Sin" and "Anthems of Rebellion." Then I found out that Johan Lliva's Arch Enemy was better, and I got the older albums.

I also started getting into Gothic Metal, specifically Sentenced (And once again, I found that the older stuff with Taneli Jarva was better) and Lacuna Coil. I pretty much covered all the more melodic stuff from 15-16. I also got into *some* Metalcore (Bury Your Dead, Killswitch Engage is all I ever listened to), but I have high standards about it. And then I listened to Slayer's "Raining Blood."

Age 16 was when I got into the heavier/extreme Metal. I first saw the music video for Behemoth's "Conquer All" and I immediately stopped listening to Nu-Metal entirely. After getting "Demigod" I got as much of their older stuff as possible. And that's how I got into Black Metal, after listening to everything before "Satanica." Then I got into Mayhem, Gorgoroth, and 1349. I learned everything about the Norwegian Black Metal circle. Around this time I also got into Nile. I immersed myself in the history of Metal over a course of 3 years. A friend then lent me Death's "Symbolic" album, Kreator's "Pleasure to Kill," and Testament's "The New Order." This got me into old school Thrash, Teutonic Thrash, and old school Death Metal like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, and Deicide.

I'm 20 now. I love everything Metal (except Power Metal, Nu-Metal, and most -core bands with very few exceptions).

was like rs years first queen than david bowie but what turned me into metal not the older bands but tygers of pantang man i did love jonh sykesbudgie motorhead and old scorpions like uliroth timemoved to harder stuff like the newwave of british heavy metal my fav band of that time saxon and still is did even run the fan club in holland for a while in holland my name is biff hahaha

than moved to faster stuff like raven shame they did not make itand of course metallicanow a days more into faster and harder stuff have to say slayer morbid angel death canibal corpse and agnostic front and lots of different thrash and metal bands and some death metal bands